The literary
activity which now and then flared up spasmodically, like flames over a
smouldering ash-heap, flickered and half-expired for want of fresh
sustenance. A direfully conventional romanticist, H. F. Ewald
(1821-1892), wrote voluminous modern and historical novels, the heroines
of which were usually models of all the copy-book virtues, and the
heroes as bloodless as their brave and loyal prototypes in "Ivanhoe" and
"Waverley." Instead of individualizing his _dramatis personae_ this
feeble successor of Ingemann and Walter Scott gave them a certificate of
character, vouching for their goodness or badness, and trusting the
reader to take his word for it in either case. Like many another popular
novelist, he varnished them with the particular tint of excellence or
depravity that might suit his purpose, stuffed their heads with bran and
their bellies with sawdust, but troubled himself little about what lay
beneath the epidermis. There was something _naive_ and juvenile in his
view of life which appealed to the large mass of half-educated people;
and the very absence of any subtle literary art tended further to
increase his public.
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